Kanye For President? So He Says, Among Other Things…

Kanye For President? Kanye West ended his rambling, by turns funny and tedious, 13-minute acceptance speech for the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at MTV’s Video Music Awards Sunday by announcing his intention to run for President in 2020. The silly, probably off-the-cuff comment seemed to flabbergast the audience.

Here are some highlights of West’s speech, which he gave after receiving his award from Taylor Swift, whom West infamously spotlight-stole six years ago at the VMAs.

On his first run-in with Swift: “I think about it sometimes, like it crosses my mind when I go to a baseball game and 60,000 people boo me. It crosses my mind a little bit.”

On awards shows: “I sat at the Grammys and saw Justin Timberlake and Cee-Lo lose. Gnarls Barkley and the Future Sex album… Justin, I ain’t trying to put you on blast but I saw that man in tears, bro. And I was thinking like, he deserves to win album of the year. And this small box that we are in as the entertainers of the evening. How could you explain that?…I still don’t understand award shows.”

Related Story

On his sacrifices: “I will die for the art, for what I believe in. The art ain’t always gonna be polite. Y’all might be thinking right now, ‘I wonder, did he smoke something before he came here?’ The answer is yes, I rolled up a little something to knock the edge off.”

On the future: “We’re gonna teach our kids that they can stand up for themselves. We’re gonna teach our kids to believe in themselves. If my grandfather was here right now he would not let me back down…It’s about ideas bro, new ideas bro. People with ideas. People who believe in truth. And yes, as you probably could have guessed by this moment, I have decided in 2020 to run for president.”